The weblog of Norman Geras

September 05, 2007

Teach your grandmother

This short item from Education Guardian captures the essence of the Guardianista, 'good people of the global dinner party' mentality. It concerns a Ministry of Defence lesson plan about Iraq, and Nick Grant's objection, for the NUT, that it promotes 'partisan political views'. A lesson plan shouldn't do this - agreed; and let's not ask whether other lesson plans on the same subject in British schools today are steering clear of partisanship in one direction or the other, because I wouldn't know. But the Guardian's writers comment about the MoD's document:

[It] omits any mention of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq. "Invasion was also necessary," it adds, "to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein, an oppressive dictator, from power, and to bring democracy to Iraq." Our troops "continue to contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq, training Iraqi security forces, rehabilitating schools and hospitals, and initiating immunisation programmes". Ah, so that's what's going on out there.

Not, of course, that Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator, was removed from power by US and British arms, that there has been an effort to bring democracy to Iraq, or that this effort has been opposed by forces unmentioned by these two journalists. Nothing of this. Omitted, as one might say. Just the ever-so-flip sign-off. I thank... hmmm... the fates not to have been of this particular concord.